Sunday, July 20, 2014

My daughter's first quilt!

A while back she asked me to help her make a quilt. I showed her some orphaned printed foundation blocks that a friend gave me. I thought that she would be able to do them pretty easily.

She liked the idea so once school was out (she is an Art teacher), we started putting fabrics together. She bought some at the International Quilt Festival and used some from my stash. The block is of a crazy square and she wanted it in low volume fabrics with just one piece in either a muted blue or muted purple.

This is a copy of the foundation piece that we scanned into my computer.

After I taught her how to do foundation piecing, she went to work sewing and completed the 15 blocks about a week and half ago. After working on a layout, I then helped her sash them.

On Friday afternoon, we sandwiched the quilt and I taught her straight line quilting around each block. Yesterday afternoon, she was ready to learn FMQ!

At first we were going to follow a template of swirls but it was more difficult for her to get the hang of it see the lines. She decided she would rather try without following any pattern. She finished them in record time for a first time quilter! We took a break and then she FMQ the borders.

Just look at that quilting!

We were on a roll with all the quilting done so we decided to make the binding. We squared up the quilt and determined how much binding was needed.

A mini lesson on how to make a scrappy binding with mitered piecing. She wanted to use mostly the blues and purples from the top with an occasional low volume thrown in. We cut enough 2 1/4" strips with a little extra. It was getting late but we really wanted to get the binding sewn on. And she did it!

Here it is hanging on my design wall with the binding attached. A lesson to hand stitch the binding will be next. She did a fabulous job on this quilt!

I am one proud mama!

With more orphaned blocks from the lady I mentioned in my last post, I put together a garden banner. The theme of these blocks was birdhouses. However, the colors were all over the place and I just couldn't see putting them together in a quilt. So I cut them down to 8.5" x 10.5", cut backings from my stash, stitched around, turned them and sewed them onto a 1/8" double fold bias tape.

The size of the flags was determined by the largest birdhouse in the blocks.

Congratulations to your daughter on her first quilt. I love her color choices, just beautiful! Using the orphan blocks for a garden banner is genius. I would have still been trying to decide what to do with them.